Altinity
Altinity, founded in 2017 by Alexander Zaitsev, is an independent commercial company providing enterprise services and managed infrastructure around ClickHouse, the open-source SQL analytics database.
Profile
Altinity provides a managed platform and enterprise support for ClickHouse, an open-source SQL analytics database designed for real-time queries at petabyte scale.
Altinity, founded in 2017 by Alexander Zaitsev, is an independent commercial company providing enterprise services and managed infrastructure around ClickHouse, the open-source SQL analytics database. Robert Hodges joined as CEO in 2019, having previously led Continuent through a successful acquisition by VMware in 2014. The company raised a $4 million seed round from Accel Partners in October 2020 to build Altinity.Cloud, a managed service now deployed across AWS, GCP, and Azure.
Altinity is not affiliated with ClickHouse, Inc., which maintains the open-source project itself; instead, Altinity functions as a commercial custodian, contributing over 1,000 pull requests to the ClickHouse ecosystem while operating its own managed platform with flexible deployment options including bring-your-own-cloud (BYOC) and bring-your-own-Kubernetes (BYOK) models. As of mid-2025, the company operates with approximately 51 employees across four continents and reported $3.8M in annual recurring revenue. The company focuses on enterprise customers requiring real-time analytics at scale, with named deployments at companies including eBay, Cisco Umbrella, Vimeo, Twilio, Lyft, PostHog, and ChartMogul.
In 2025, Altinity released Project Antalya, a strategic initiative aimed at eliminating trade-offs between real-time database performance and data lake scalability. Key 2025 announcements include the launch of managed Apache Iceberg catalogs and compute swarms for Altinity.Cloud in July, enabling ClickHouse to query data stored in cheaper object storage while maintaining sub-second query performance. The company differentiates from ClickHouse Cloud by offering full access to open-source ClickHouse features, including experimental functionality, and avoids usage-based pricing in favor of allocated compute and storage models.
Who buys this
- Enterprise analytics teams building real-time BI applications on ClickHouse
- High-scale data companies storing petabytes of time-series and event data
- Technology platforms needing sub-second query performance for user-facing analytics
- Organizations requiring on-premise or bring-your-own-cloud deployment of managed ClickHouse
Publicly disclosed clients
- eBay
- Cisco Umbrella
- Vimeo
- Twilio
- Lyft
- PostHog
- ChartMogul
Strengths and what to watch
Strengths
- Full access to open-source ClickHouse features, including experimental functionality not available on competing managed services
- Flexible deployment models (hosted, BYOC, BYOK) with no usage-based pricing constraints
- Deep technical expertise: founders and team include original ClickHouse implementers and community contributors
Watch for
- ClickHouse, Inc. raised $400M at $15B valuation in January 2026; ClickHouse Cloud is now well-capitalized and aggressively scaling
- Altinity has raised only $4M since 2020 (six years ago); unclear if company is self-sustaining or seeking additional capital
- Competitive dynamics with ClickHouse Cloud: ClickHouse Inc maintains the open-source project and controls roadmap; Altinity as third-party vendor may face feature parity or adoption headwinds
Recent moves
Key Information
- Industry
- Real Time Databases
- Founded
- 2017
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Altinity?
Altinity is a managed platform and enterprise support provider for ClickHouse, an open-source SQL analytics database. Founded in 2017 by Alexander Zaitsev, the company offers hosted infrastructure, flexible deployment options, and technical expertise to companies requiring real-time analytics at petabyte scale.
How does Altinity differ from ClickHouse Cloud?
Altinity provides full access to all open-source ClickHouse features including experimental functionality, while ClickHouse Cloud limits some capabilities. Altinity uses allocated compute and storage pricing instead of usage-based models. Altinity also offers more flexible deployment options: hosted, bring-your-own-cloud, or bring-your-own-Kubernetes.
What deployment options does Altinity offer?
Altinity supports three main deployment models: hosted infrastructure managed by Altinity, bring-your-own-cloud (BYOC) to deploy on your preferred cloud provider, and bring-your-own-Kubernetes (BYOK) for on-premise or private Kubernetes deployments. This flexibility lets organizations choose where and how they run ClickHouse.
How does Altinity handle real-time analytics at scale?
ClickHouse, which Altinity manages, is engineered for real-time SQL queries on massive datasets at petabyte scale. Altinity's infrastructure and expertise ensure consistent sub-second query performance even with high-velocity time-series and event data. This enables BI applications, monitoring dashboards, and analytics at enterprise scale.
What is Project Antalya?
Project Antalya is Altinity's 2025 strategic initiative to eliminate the performance versus scalability trade-off. It includes managed Apache Iceberg catalog integration and compute swarms, enabling ClickHouse to query cheaper object storage while maintaining sub-second query performance. This bridges real-time databases with data lake economics.
Who uses Altinity?
Altinity serves enterprise companies and technology platforms requiring real-time analytics at scale. Named customers include eBay, Cisco Umbrella, Vimeo, Twilio, Lyft, PostHog, and ChartMogul. These organizations depend on Altinity for real-time BI applications, high-velocity event analytics, and petabyte-scale data processing across industries.
How Altinity compares
Direct head-to-head against 3 competitors. Picked by 7wData.
Altinity
- Positioning
- Altinity provides a managed platform and enterprise support for ClickHouse, an open-source SQL analytics database designed for real-time queries at petabyte scale.
- Customer segments
- Enterprise analytics teams building real-time BI applications on ClickHouse
- Strengths
- Full access to open-source ClickHouse features, including experimental functionality not available on competing managed services
- Watch for
- ClickHouse, Inc. raised $400M at $15B valuation in January 2026; ClickHouse Cloud is now well-capitalized and aggressively scaling
- Recent moves
- Altinity.Cloud launches managed Apache Iceberg integration with compute swarms for hybrid real-time and lake analytics
ClickHouse Cloud
- Positioning
- ClickHouse Inc.'s own managed service, positioned as the authoritative hosted version of ClickHouse for analytics and AI workloads.
- Customer segments
- Enterprise engineering and AI teams at scale; named deployments include Anthropic, Tesla, Lyft, and Meta.
- Strengths
- Controls the open-source ClickHouse roadmap; ships proprietary cloud features before any third-party managed service.
- Watch for
- January 2025 price increase of approximately 30% plus new egress fees; customers cite materially higher total cost of ownership.
- Recent moves
- Raised $400M Series D led by Dragoneer at $15B valuation, January 2026; acquired Langfuse for LLM observability.
Firebolt
- Positioning
- Cloud analytics database for customer-facing and product-embedded workloads requiring sub-second query latency at high concurrency.
- Customer segments
- Engineering and data platform teams at SaaS, media, and fintech companies building latency-sensitive user-facing analytics products.
- Strengths
- Proprietary indexing architecture delivering sub-second performance on high-cardinality, high-concurrency analytical workloads.
- Watch for
- Co-founders Farkash and Bitner stepped down from management in 2025; February 2026 workforce cuts signal ongoing strategic instability.
- Recent moves
- Cut workforce in February 2026 and pivoted toward AI efficiency; co-founders Farkash and Bitner exited management roles in 2025.
StarTree
- Positioning
- Managed Apache Pinot service for real-time user-facing analytics, fraud detection, and observability at high query concurrency.
- Customer segments
- Product and data platform engineers at high-scale companies needing real-time operational analytics; customers include Uber and Stripe.
- Strengths
- Production-grade managed Pinot with high-cardinality upsert, tiered storage, and sub-second concurrency at scale.
- Watch for
- Last disclosed funding was $47M Series B in August 2022; no subsequent round publicly confirmed in nearly four years.
- Recent moves
- Launched serverless Iceberg query without prior ingestion on StarTree Cloud in 2026, targeting lakehouse analytics buyers.
Sources
- altinity.com — Company headquarters (Berkeley, CA), current products (Altinity.Cloud, Kubernetes Operator, Backup, Grafana Plugin), and positioning as leading advocates for ClickHouse
- techcrunch.com — Founding story, $4M seed round from Accel in October 2020, Robert Hodges appointment as CEO in 2019, initial team size of 27 with plans to hire 15 more
- altinity.com — Leadership team: Robert Hodges (CEO), Alexander Zaitsev (CTO), Mindaugas Zukas (COO), company mission to eliminate performance-cost-flexibility tradeoffs
- altinity.com — Named customers including eBay, Cisco Umbrella, Vimeo, Twilio, Lyft, PostHog, ChartMogul, and Altinity.Cloud usage across multiple industries
- altinity.com — Relationship between Altinity and ClickHouse, Inc. (not affiliated), differentiation in features, deployment flexibility, and pricing models
- www.accel.com — Accel's investment thesis on Altinity and ClickHouse as a transformational database technology
- altinity.com — July 2025 announcement of managed Iceberg catalogs and compute swarms as part of Project Antalya initiative